 Inner Fish Performance Co. is an interdisciplinary performance company from Kelowna B.C. that creates touring performances. Artistic Directors Neil Cadger and Denise Kenney collaborate with artists from diverse disciplines to create original work that challenges the boundaries of live performance, destabilizes perception and opens opportunities for reflection. The company is committed to offering educational and professional opportunities for emerging interdisciplinary artists.
Inner Fish Performance Co.exists to:
- Create meaningful experiences for audiences regionally, nationally and internationally.
- Collaborate with diverse communities and artists from different disciplines to create original work that challenges the boundaries of live performance.
- Offer educational and professional opportunities for emerging interdisciplinary artists.
Inner Fish Performance Co. formally came into existence in March, 2010. Artistic Directors Neil Cadger and Denise Kenney produced two works-in-progress prior to this time. Ground Rules was presented at the 2008 Independent Media Arts Alliance Conference hosted by Kelowna's Alternator Gallery for Contemporary Art and the Independent Media Arts Alliance in partnership with the Ullus Collective and the National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition. Video and sound assets for this piece were designed by Stephen Foster and Steve Heimbecker. In the spring of 2009 we received a UBC Okanagan Interdisciplinary / Collaborative Research Grant to further develop the ideas generated by this process. The resulting incarnation was entitled Inner Fish. It was presented at the Theatre Kelowna warehouse in July of 2009. Additional video assets for this piece were designed by José Gates and set and prop assets were designed by visual artists David and Jordan Doodey.
In December 2009 we had the opportunity to workshop The House at the end of the Road with Blake Brooker (One Yellow Rabbit) for one week.While much of our work to this date had been devoted to the creation of imagery, this provided us with the opportunity to work specifically on a written script. In March of 2010 we further developed the work in collaboration with Denise Clarke (also of One Yellow Rabbit).
The House at the end of the Road was pitched at the Magnetic North Theatre Festival in Kitchener in June, 2010. Inner Fish Performance Co. was one of eight companies to be invited to pitch their project at this festival. This show was also performed in Vancouver in June, 2010 at the Cultch Cultural Lab space.
THE HOUSE AT THE END OF THE ROAD is a story of a man, a woman and a house told with seeds, bones, and bodies. The show dives in and out of the deep history underpinning moments in the life of a middle-aged white couple in the interior of BC as they ponder the future of their heritage home over a piece of chubby chicken.
The audience is free to move about the space. The show begins with five gallons of wheat seeds poured onto the floor. As the seeds are moved around, images of insemination and fertility morph into images of agriculture and architecture. Historical accounts underscore personal dilemmas. Suitcases become apartment buildings, chairs become musical instruments, and the couple's "house of cards" sits precariously center stage amidst the action.
THE SOUNDCAN PROJECT: The Art of Public Noise
The Soundcan Project was (and continues to be) an experiment using indoor and outdoor public spaces as performance venues for live art. The intention is to interrupt habit and challenge traditional and sanctioned cultural exchanges. In May and June of 2011, six public interventions in Europe were created, performed and recorded for a documentary film depicting public intervention practices and their goals and outcomes. These included performances in Utrecht, Gent, Bielefeld and Berlin.
The project was developed as a collaboration between Denise Kenney, Michael V. Smith and Neil Cadger. UBCO Interdisciplinary Graduate student Tanja Woloshen, UBCO Interdisciplinary Performance Undergraduate students Kevin Jesuino and Tyler Hansen, and Regina Performance Artist Michele Sereda were also co-collaborators and performers for the European tour.
Soundcan technology combines a portable amplifier and a battery with an audio speaker inserted into an aluminum can. The soundcan is connected to an amplifier by 5 metres of speaker cable; the amp and battery are attached to the performer. Depending on the nature of the project, there are three sound sources used: a headset microphone, a cordless microphone receiver and an mp3 player. This mobile sound technology has a number of striking acoustic qualities. When the can is swung in a circular fashion, for example, it creates the well-known Doppler Effect which can be oddly disorienting, particularly if there are numerous soundcans. As soundcans can be linked to any sound device, the available sounds for composition are vast.
We first invited to perform Instant Artifacts at the opening reception at the Performance Studies International Conference in Utrecht, Netherlands. We also performed a number of street interventions in Utrecht itself, the most successful happening in the courtyard of the Dom Cathedral in the centre of Utrecht where we amplified Stabat Mater and circulated through the highly resonant space to bring attention to its history.
We then traveled to Gent, Belgium, where we worked with Craig Weston from The Primitives and Koekoek a new street theatre company Weston created within the infrastructure of De Vieze Gasten, a social-cultural centre in Ghent Belgium. Weston is internationally renowned for his street theatre work and Koekoek produces monthly public interventions unannounced and outside the framework of scheduled performance venues and festivals. We created and performed a number of interventions throughout the city of Gent, including Sheep/Wolf, The Beach, and Café Terrace.
Siegmar Schroeder of Theaterlabor also invited us to create and present a soundcan intervention with his theatre company in Bielefeld, Germany. Besides indoor performances, Theaterlabor is also renowned for outdoor spectacles and work that engages the community outside of the traditional performance venue. The company develops shows for museum, industrial buildings and landscapes. We performed Moo, and The Beach on the street and we created site-specific installations in their large theatre complex as part of Theatre Labor’s Junge Triebe festival.
In Berlin we performed in the Krezberg’s Gorlitzer park where we were filmed by documentarian Volker Meyer-Dabisch who is doing a documentary about this old eastern block railway terminus turned park. This intervention was sponsored by R.E.H. (Spatial Extension Container) of the association Selbstuniversitat e.V. in Berlin.
The entire process of rehearsal and execution of the public interventions was recorded for a documentary film. The film will portray the spirit and aesthetics of this endeavor as well as its theoretical underpinnings. . It is a hybrid work that depicts live performance practice and product while existing as a creative entity to be valued beyond an archival function.
CHAINSAW BALLET
Chainsaw Ballet was created for the Woodhaven Eco-Art project. There was a public performance of the work at the nature conservancy in the winter of 2011. This performance was filmed and turned into a 5 minute experimental film by the same name. The film satirizes our nostalgic relationship to logging and the mythology of our dominance over nature.
Neil Cadger and Denise Kenney are practitioners of physical theatre, having worked in dance, theatre, film and T.V. for over twenty years in Europe and North America. In addition to establishing their new company Inner Fish Performance Co., they also teach Interdisciplinary Performance in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies (in the Department of Creative Studies) at UBC Okanagan. They both studied at the Lecoq Theatre School in Paris and they both received MFA degrees at UBC Vancouver (Denise for Film Directing and Neil for Theatre Directing). Neil Cadger co-founded Wissel Theatre (1984), a physical theatre company based in Gent, Belgium, where he created a number of performances that toured Europe and North America. Subsequently Neil continued his work as a teacher, director and freelance performer, winning a Dora Award in 1990 for his collaboration with Denise Clarke and Mark Christmann on Erotic Irony. Denise has worked as a director, teacher, and performer/creator for theatres in Canada and the U.S. She has written, directed and produced narrative and documentary independent film and has worked in the U.S. and Canada in lifestyle series television (for which she won a 2001 Leo award for Best Director in a Lifestyle Series).
Contact Information
Neil Cadger: 250-807-9349, neil.cadger@ubc.ca
Denise Kenney: 250-807-9632, denise.kenney@ubc.ca
Discover your inner fish...
PCC CONFERENCE
Click here to see PCC Conference photos.
Click here to see JACOB ZIMMER BOXES LECTURE.
DEVISED PERFORMANCE
Click here to see Devised Performance video.
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